It was revealed on Sunday that another Pakistani cricketer was caught on cameras talking about how almost all the matches involving Pakistan were fixed. Yasir Hameed, the man in question, had tapes of his speaking to the News of the World reporter about the alleged involvement of many Pakistani cricketers in match-fixing.
Immediately after the tapes were released, the media went into an overdrive and begun speaking of how the scandal has grown into a monstrous proportion. However, Hameed was quick to issue a denial, first saying that he hadn’t spoken to any reporter from the News of the World, and then accepting that while he was the man in the videos, he was actually speaking to someone who had offered him sponsorship deals.
In a full media release later, Hameed clarified that he had been approached by a gentleman for a sponsorship deal and offered to pay him at least £50,000 for the deal, which was for 6”x3” ETIHAD sticker at the back of the cricket bat plus TV and billboard advertisements in the UAE. According to Hameed, the reporter also asked for names of four other players who may be interested, and he said Umar Gul, Shahid Afridi, Umar Akmal and Fawad Alam.
Later, Hameed claims that he even called Gul up, who asked Hameed to negotiate a better contract.
According to Hameed, once the deal was finalised, the reporter began to speak about the match-fixing scandal and the middle-order batsman said that he had only repeated what he saw on TV and in the News of the World expose.
Later, according to Hameed, when the tapes were released, the batsman denied the comments were attributed to him. However, he says that he got a text message from the News of the World stating, “Pls call me. Incidentally you are in video drinking wine and saying all the quotes attributed to you. Denying it is just stupid as we will be releasing the video to tv. Better that you stand up and speak the truth!!!!”